Beware - Signing Of Credit Agreements Containing Suretyship Clauses!

If a person signs a credit application form in a representative capacity on behalf of a company or other juristic person and is not advised that the form also contains a personal suretyship by the signatory, such document itself would constitute a misrepresentation which induced a mistake by the signatory, and the personal suretyship obligation of the signatory would be invalid.

In the recent case of Brink v Humphries & Jewell (Proprietary) Limited 2005 (2) SA 419 (SCA); the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) has again dealt with the important principle of "caveat subscriptor". The signature to a document creates a refutable presumption that a person who puts his signature to a document knows what the document contains. If the contents of a document turn out not to be to the signatories liking, he has no one to blame but himself. The basis of the caveat subscriptor rule is a reliance upon the doctrine of quasi-mutual asset, the question being simply whether the other